Werner Erhard - Some Aspects of the Est Training and Transpersonal Psychology: A Conversation

8/22/2019 Werner Erhard - Some Aspects of the Est Training and Transpersonal Psychology: A Conversation

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SOME ASPECTS OF EST TRAININGAND TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY:A CONVERSATION

Werner, ErhardSan Francisco, CaliforniaJames FadimanMenlo Park, CaliforniaThis is an edited transcript ofa discussion that took place Feb-ruary 1, 1977, in San Francisco. The occasion was an informalmeeting ofa few members of the Association for TranspersonalPsychology, several Journal editors, andfriends.Werner Erhard is the founder and primary spokesman for Er-hard Seminar Training (est). James Fadiman is a lecturer,author, a past president of the Association, and an associateeditor with the Journal.After opening remarks by Frances Vaughan Clark, preSident ofthe Association, the following discussion took place with occa-sional audience participation.JF: One thing I'm not sure of is whether you and I agree onthe role of the self, or the personality. That may be because I'mso interested in "devaluing" personality. I am more and moreusing the term "personal drama" rather than personality sothat even "getting off one's position" to use an est term, isn'tgetting off enough since one is still attached to getting off'one'sposition. This seems to be more a transpersonal value thanperhaps you would accept.WE: No, I'd be wholly aligned with what you just said. I'll tellyou where I think the difference might lie though, and that isperhaps in the path. What one does with personality is notavoid it, or ignore it, or suppress it, or shove it out of the way,bu t take responsibility for it, complete one's relationship with

theissueofpersonality

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one's personality, transcend it. and therefore include it as a

personaliTiesof

enlightenedbeings

content in the context which one is when one transcends one'spersonality. So. rather than to do away with the personality-and I'm not sure that transpersonal psychology would doaway with personality-I want to make it clear that eST wouldnot do away with the personality. One would be responsiblefor it. cause it. instead of be the effect of it. Essentially onewould complete one's personality as a way of being unattachedto it.JF: I'll go very much for that. ] think the difference is that itisn't "destroy" or "ignore". it's "devalue" the personality.What finally made it clear for me was when I met a couple ofpeople who. in all general senses. are enlightened beings andgo around doing what they do. and who still have personalities.And their personalities still had character flaws and irritationsand neurotic disturbances and bad stuff from their mother.and 1 thought, "Oh, what a terrible disaster this is, to beenlightened and still have your personality." But then as Iwatch them operate they also still have their arms and theirhair. In this sense, personality doesn { interfere with theirfunction. but it also isn't the place from which they function.Their personality hangs around and when it's appropriate. itoperates.WE: Yes. That, by the way, is for me the most commonpopular flaw in the notion of what it is that we're talking about.That is, the notion that people who are enlightened don't havepersonalities and do have or don't have hair, as the case maybe, depending upon which discipline it is, or don't have neuroses, etc. That's a kind of campaign ofmine-to humanize ourheroes. And the problem is that you get caught in a dilemma. Ifyou humanize the hero, then you begin to make human qualities or personality all right, and that isn't the answer either. Itreally is jus t as you described it. I feel that we're totally alignedon that. I would like to find where there are differences, if thereare some. You have a better insight into both camps than I do,Jim, so maybe you ought to point out where you think thedifferences might lie.JF: Well, there is certainly a difference in method. ) think youare more from a tradition that has people sit out in front of thetemple for a couple days, miserable, cold, hungry. desperate.and if they still want to get in then you let them in. Much of thework I am interested in uses the method of going out andgiving a little soup while they are out there. Milarepa (in TheHundred Thousand SongsofMilarepa) has this wonderful dichotomy: he goes to work for Marpa who treats him like a totaldisaster, just beats him and kicks him and snarls at him and

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makes him sick. and Marpa's wife every once in a while comesand gives him a little soup and a little love and says. "Don'tworry, he doesn't hate you; this is what he calls teaching." Andin some sense you're clearer on this being. the teacher. who. soto speak. beats people and makes them sore. Less visible is thewife, the compassionate side, the soft compassionate side, It'svery clear that est is compassionate but it's the compassion ofthe "steel sword," and I'm not really comfortable with thatapproach. I notice that in the work I do when I'm trying tomove people on, it's always from a' much gentler place,WE: Yes.JF: You and I have talked about this in terms of the way oneruns, say, a communications workshop. That is, is it necessaryto force upsets, or force people's anxieties and irritations anddisturbances to the surface to get the job done? I think this maybe an area where we operate differently.WE: Yes. and again I think that the difference is one ofdegree. For example. in the est training it's c l ~ a r to me that ifpeople don't have the experience of being loved in the t r a i n ~ing-I don't mean of being sympathized with, I really meanbeing loved-that they are deprived of something in the t r a i n ~ing. Somewhere along the line they have got to catch on tothe fact that the person who is doing the training loves themand is doing the training out of the experience of loving. them.By the same token, I agree with you totally that if there is aspectrum within which to operate, est would be at one end of itand you and the o t ~ e r people I know who identify themselvesas transpersonal people would probably be at the other end ofit. But what I am trying. to point out is that I would feeluncomfortable characterizing eSf as devoid of that gentler kindof compassIon. And I would feel uncomfortable as c h a r a c t e r ~izing transpersonal psychology as being devoid of the harsherkind of compassion.JF: I've certainly been a lot meaner since experiencing yourtraining.WE: There is a place where I think there's a real o p p o r t u ~nity to explore something, although we may turn out to agreetotally about this too. I want to start the conversation with whatGregory Bateson calls "natural history" and talk about whatis c.ommonly c .dIed experience, or what we ordinarily meanwhen we use the word "experience." If you say to someone"What are you experiencing right now?", and they attempt todescribe what they are experiencing right now, what they d i s ~cover is the best they can hope to do is describe what they

"

harshandkindcompassion

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experienceandconcepts

explanatoryprinciples

experienced a moment ago, and can never describe what they are experiencing right now. In addition to which. {hey can't even thjnk about what they're experiencing right now. and they can't even perceive what they're experiencing right now. because when they stop to perceive it. it puts it back in time. I suggest that it's actually even worse than that. Not only can't they perceive what they're experiencing right now, but the best that they can do is to perceive what they experienced a moment ago. Actually. they're not able to perceive even what they experienced a moment ago. The best they can hope to do is to perceive the symbols used to record what was experienced a moment ago. Ultimately all perception is of symbols only and never of experience. And the symbols of experience are conceptual and kind of pictorial-perhaps "conceptual" is really the more technically accurate word. So one has experience and one has concepts of experience. And the purpose of the concepts of experience is to organize experience. otherwise one would have to grope around the walls of the room to find a hole to get through because of the lack of the concept "doors." In addition one would have to fall through the hole accidentally to get out of the room, So, concepts about experience are very valuable in that they allow one to survive and function in the world. We could say that experience is process, is moment by momentby moment, and concepts are aboul experiences and organize it and are its organizing principles.To put it into more conversational language, I would call a concept an explanatoryprinciple.Fundamentally, I think what goes wrong in people's lives isthat the concepts begin to determine what is experienced. Thenone has a conceptually determined experience which reinforces the concept. which then' more fully determines the experience, which again reinforces the concept. and so on. Thenpeople almost literally drop out of the experience of life andlive in a mechanical state in which all, or most of, their experience is conceptually derived, So if you ask someone, "Do youlove your wife?", and they say "Yes, but I don' t get along withher very well," what they really mean is that they live with theconcept that they love their wife. and very infrequently do theyhave the experience, if at all.Then, ifyour concepts agree with society's values. you're calledsuccessful, and if your concepts don't agree with society'svalues, you're called criminal. revolutionary. insane, etc. Andso you have only one of two things to do. First. the old notion

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of what to do with deviant people was to give them the rightconcepts through some form of brainwashing. a very new termfor a very old technique. It's also called enculturation. socialization. etc. Or secondly. you can give them therapy.My notion about the newer therapies is that they intervene inthe space between concept and experience. and break the gripof concept on experience so the person can begin to experiencemore directly. These techniques allow people to get in touchwith their bodies. to get in touch with their sense of motion.their way of being. their emotions and their feelings, etc.I'd like to suggest a third alternative. The third alternative ishard to describe because ou r language is designed to dealalmost exclusively with concepts or explanatory principlesand, rarely. with experiential quality. This third part of thegame is simply not available through language for the mostpart. You can only point at it, you can never capture it. I amtalking about what there isn't a word for, and there really isn'tany way to talk about it because even the syntax doesn't workvery well on this.1 call this third alternative the "generating principles" of life.So we have, first, the generating principlesofiife, "Second theprocess of life itself. an d third the explanatory principles of

'< life. When you're functioning with the generating principles....you can't explain life. So, in Zen, it is said that those who knowdon't tell. In other words, Wlffatgeiferates the pnIOiI'IS8oes not~ " i t -or explain it. To say those who tell don't knowm ~ i U S t h a t which explains the praees of life does no t give rise

t ~ a t process but merely organizes it.\As far as I can tell transpersonal psychology is very muchabout the generating principles. at least it approaches themthrough the paradigms of processes and of concepts. It still hassome of its roots in therapy and psychology. which seem to beconceptual, and more of its roots in what I like to call thehumanistic psychological approach, which I see as experiential. Transpersonal psychology seems to be centrally concernedwith generating principles. Now just to give us a language totalk with, I call these generating principles "abstractions."JF: Your model is one which points toward abstraction. InBuddhism there is a name for this, it's called the "boat." Onegets in the boat and crosses the great water with the boat. Onlyan idiot carries the boat onto the land on the other side. We callthose "idiots" scholars and theologians. Some of them write forthe Journal. They hang out here for a while and then decide

thegeneratingprinciples' \ O f life

abstraction

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that since their stuff is useless on the other side they better goback-wbich is what I think J do because I love playing withconcepts, kind oflike juggling invisible baseballs.WE: The usual models exclude abstraction, which leavesonly experience and concepts. Either you're a touchy-feely oryou've got some intelligence. one or the other and never thetwain shall meet. I think that some of the people in humanisticpsychology kind of bought that, and my suggestion is that trueintellect is a function of abstraction. There was a time whenyou couldn't really learn relativity theory. although you coulddifferent know it. In other words vou could abstract it. but vou couldn't. - -logics "concept" it. In Copernicus' time. one probably couldn't con-for ceptualize the sun as the center of the solar system. You couldconcepts create that notion. you could know it by making it so-not by

and' concept-making, but by creating it. Physics fascinates me beabstractions', cause at its edge, Einstein took physics out of the sensorium.out of concepts. Even if you use concepts that seem to tranf scend the sensorium, ultimately they're rooted back in the sensorium. For instance, infinity (00) is a beautiful symbol. Youcan put it right in the center of your concepts. and manipulate

it in mathematical models, and it's lovely. But the concept ofinfinity and the "sense" of infinity at the level of abstractionare two entirely different entities for me. So concepts have onelogic and abstractions have another logic, and the two logicsare entirely different, and they are based on entirely separateepistemological systems.JF: I guess I'm seeing it from a place called "certainty." Certainty is right in the middle of abstraction. The degenerativeform of certainty is called knowledge and then it goes downfrom there to the lowest form which would be rationalizationor reasons. The concept of infinity. which I can't handle at alLis more useful to me as "eternity." In terms of the conceptualworld, eternity is a long time. and in the abstraction areaeternity is an experience, and I know that many of the peoplehere have experienced it. If you haven't experienced it, youdon't know what it's about, and when people say. "Well isn'teternity a long time?''. you say, "That isn't it." And you say,"Well how about a very long time? How about three of them?"So the thing that is fascinating to me is that all that I'm interested in, in some sense, is the little sign posts that people leaveout. It's that old problem of pointing the way, and people comeand suck on your finger. I'm really interested in how Transpersonal is trying to set up a little set of road maps that say notonly, "There's the finger that points the way," but then there'sanother sign that says that "This is only a finger, do not suck,"That's the place that I see transpersonal psychology doing a

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sen'ice, talking in the conceptual world but continually pointing out where all the windows and doors are. In some sense rsee transpersonal as a highly intellectualized activity, drawingfrom experience. taking it from eternity. and seeing whathappens.One of Ram Dass' many stories is about his teacher who wentin and out of Nirvana. He'd . . . [inhales] . . . and he'd be inNirvana and he'd come out and everything would be totally

. new and cool and fascinating. and he'd say something whichwas from a place ofcertainty and then he'd start to get stuck inthe world. He'd think he was hungry. or an old Hindu, orwhatever his thing was, and he'd take ano ther breath and he'dgo out again. And "out" was eternity and timelessness andselflessness. etc., and then he'd come back and everything wasnew again and he'd say something else. When you've been inthe place of certainty and "come out" now and then. the storymakes a lot of sense. If you haven't, it sounds like one of RamDass ' crazy stories. Physiologically it looks like you can't be init because that type of eternity isn't a long time, and you're in itin time so you come in and out. And the thing about the esttraining or sitting Zazen. or taking dope, or falling down thestairs, or a lot of other things is that you may break. just for amoment. into "eternity." Once you've been in it long enoughor often enough. then at least you know that it was there.There's a phrase in the training called "I got it," when reallythe phrase should be "I had it." because all you get is that youhad it. As soon as you say you've got it you no longer have it,but you know you had it and therefore things can change. Ithink that's what we're all talking about, and that all of ourwork has been in that direction. We 're coming up with different signposts and different ways, and the thing that I like aboutwhat you [W.E.] do is that the training has brought into possibility that moment of eternity, or certainty, or infinity, forpeople who seem not to have any other signposts.WE: There's something J have to say, and I want to saysomething less than I mean as a way of sneaking up on what Imean. J ,..t lOay,.that ifytiu don't keep reminding yourselftQat you're talking about UJat which one -can't talk about. youcap rapidly come to false conclusions. When you're manipulating symbols, you can make conclusions that are wholly consistent or logical or 1000timate within a given system of symbols,but which have little or no Jegitimacy the realm of experience and certainly none in the realm of abstractioQt SQ at thelevel"r concept, we manipulate symbols around and come up


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theprocessand the-

source ofprocess

too. I'm repeating a lot of what you said. by the way, to keep reminding us that a good idea isn't necessarily accurate about experiences or abstractions. It seems to me that concept is never sufficient to tell the truth inthe world of experience-that it's always deficient. It's essentially deficient in a quantum way rather than in a linear way.It's not just less than experience. it's different than experience.I would say to transpersonal psychology people. watch outfor an equivalent deficiency with regard to experience. Beinghigh, getting zonked, knowing. insight, whatever, is so far beyond concept and provides such valuable insights into concepts that it becomes very appealing. almost like bait to getcaught on and stop at experience. When you get marvelous.incredible insights, and it feels terrific. and you have a sense ofat-one-ness and a sense of spaciousness or spacelessness. thenit's a good idea to watch out that you don't get trapped therebecause that isn't the source of the process, that is. the process,and the process does have a source. What you can learn byexperience lies about the world of abstraction or the world ofthe source of the process.Let me give you an analogy. Imagine that you and I arecaterpillars and we're down here on the floor and we're talkingabout being up there in that plant and you say, "Listen, I'mgoing to turn you on to something. I want you to get that it'spossible to go from down here on the floor to up there on thatleafwithout crawling over the space in between." Now I knowthat experientially that's crazy. that cannot be done, it's experientially impossible-J know because I've been up on plantslike that a thousand times. So I say to you. "You're talkingabout some concept. about getting from here to there without covering-What would be for a caterpillar-the space inbetween." So I accuse you of conceptualizing. but a kind ofmad conceptualizing since it doesn't fit with the consensusreality. I f you think about it you'l1 see a caterpillar could s i m ~ply not get the idea of flying, it's simply not available to acaterpillar.I like this analogy because no matter whether he knows it ornot. the caterpillar turns into a butterfly, which is my view ofthe way it's all going-so all this conversation may be irrelevantanyhow. But to the butterfly. the idea of flying is. of course.very natural and the butterfly encompasses within the flight theequivalent to the walk up the wall. or the space in between. Soone of the things I would say to transpersonal people is thatjus t as there is a distinction between concept and experience, sothere is a distinction between experience and abstraction. Theprocess of life has one system of logic, an epistemology. a

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philosophy and an ontology. which is distinct and differentfrom and not predictable by the epistemology, logic, etc . ofexperience. Now there's one last point J want to make but Jthink it's your turn.JF: I just had an image of a surfer. If you ve ever been surfingand you're riding a wave. particularly if you're body surfing soyou're more into it. there's a feeling of total unity and oneness.Now what would happen to a surfer if you came up to him andsaid, "Excuse me. do you realize the cause of this?-it's themoon!" He might say, "I doubt it, because every way I have ofknowing, it's very clear that it has nothing to do with themoon." To say it's the moon might imply living in a space.which, even if so, detracts from life. Now I'm not sure if thatimage fits what you just said.WE: 1'think it does. What 1 think you're saying to me is"Look, what you do with experience is experience it, be conscious ofit . be aware of it, be in it." Now are you telling me thatyou want me to be in and conscious ofand aware of the sourceof mv experience? Even that seems to detract from the experi

e n c ~ . 1 agree. You've fallen beautifully into my trap.JF: You may now make your last point.WE: Yes. The reason] say you've fallen into the trap. whichobviously you haven't. otherwise I wouldn't be telling you youdid, is that you're applying experiential values to abstraction,and abstraction has no experiential value when viewed fromabstraction. Abstraction only has an experiential value whenviewed from experience. just as experience doesn't have muchvalue when viewed from concept. So the validity of an abstraction is not predictable and even sounds ludicrous orstrange from the structure of concept.Let me give you another analogy. I f you take a deck of cardsand they are arranged in their logical sequence from acethrough king. you may for example. want to know about theking. But if you are coming at the king from the ace. the wayyou get there is to go from ace to two to three to four to five tosix to seven to eight. and every step gets you closer and closer tothe king and finally you bang into the king and you say "Ah. Inow know what the king is because I stood on the queen andreached the king." What I'm suggesting is that as fully asyou've apprehended the king. apprehending the king the otherway, from the top of the deck down, is entirely different.Similarly, if you get experience backwards. which is the way inwhich I think humankind has it, then in fact. no matter how

abstractionandexperientialvalues

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changingaltitudes.values

and beliefs

smart you are. you are stupid. because the best you can do is explain it. but have no mastery of it. Or. the very best you can do is to force it, which is the other end of the spectrum from mastery of it. So. I say that if you don't start at the abstract end of the spectrum with the cause of things. if you're not coming out of the cause of things into your experience. then you're not fully experiential. And if you're not coming ou t of your experience into the concepts. then you're not even fully conceptual. I'm suggesting that there is a logical sequence here and that there is a logical flow or an appropriate flow or a natural flow. JF : There are two ways to look at that flow. One is. detachment is of no value to someone who is detached, which is avalueless space. which is very awkward when you're strivingfor detachment because you realize that when you get it youwon't care about it. The other side is. and I quote a Sufi source."A donkey with a load of books is still an ass." an d as youpointed out. "here we are." coming from the load of books sideof the hassle. In the first research I ever did many years agowith psychedelics it was clear that something changed afterthe participants had a single high-dose psychedelic experience.We tried to get at what had changed. and it wasn't reallyphysiological. It was something about personality structure.but mainly it was attitudes. beliefs. and values, which madehuge shifts almost overnight. Subsequently, the research subjects spent a long time trying to figure out how to restructuretheir lives to include these new values.Aud: Would you say that same kind of thing happens to thepeople who go through the est training?WE: Yes, I would say that it's a secondary result rather than aprimary result. The primary result for me is a shift not inattitude-that happens secondarily-but a shift in one's attitude about attitudes. So that rather than, "I used to have ashitty attitude and now I have a positive attitude," one h.ears,'1 used to be stuck in my attitude whether it was shitty orpositive, and I actually thought I had that attitude and that wasmy attitude. And now I can see that 1 have a whole spectrum ofattitudes through which J move back and forth. none of whichI am. and none of which is my attitude because I don't have anattitude-I am watching attitudes occur." So I think that whenthat happens. when you transcend attitude and you don't havethat attachment to your attitude anymore, you know things arerotten. but so what. you know they are just rotten. that's all. It'snot rotten that they are rotten. they are only rotten. Whereasyesterday it was terrible if they were rotten. now, you knowthey are just rotten and later on they will be terrific, and after

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they are terrific they will be rotten again. and it kind of goeslike that in no particular order necessarily. Any",ay. I'm hereamongst all the psychologists so ] can't let you get away withthat attitude stuff. "

J F: From an attitude to beatitude.A ud: We should probably look at what attitude really means.Mood is more what you're describing I think.WE: Technically. attitude means a way of holding the worldor a way of holding what you view. In other words. you have apoint of view about the content of your perception or thecontent ofyour experiences.Aud: It literally comes from how to hold yourselfin the world.a body attitude.JF: The word "attitude" is a stance. Every time people try todefine transpersonal education. or psychology. or whatevertheir discipline is. what I try to say is "No, Transpersonal isn'tthat. it's simply a stance or an attitude. a way of taking onwhatever it is you're taking on," which is my way of trying toproject us from being the kind of group that people would haveto say, "They're stuck in their attitude. Jet's form somethingelse."WE: That's one of the things that I think is brilliant abouttrallspersonal. It's reany beyond point of view. The word itselfalmost means that.A ud: I was interested in your caterpillars and your quickstatement when you were talking about how the caterpillar isgoing to become a butterfly anyway and for that process to1ccur it's not necessary for him to know it. And then] thought.ell then, why est. why transpersonal education? Certainly not

~ ( ' a u s e it's needed.I f 'L"' Well. I have something to say about that Life is essen-tially . bout "making it" and you get to define what "it" is.Maybe it ,. ,ing in the right part of town. or maybe it is notliving in the right part of town. depending upon which cultureyou're part of. But life is ~ ~ s e n t j a l l y about making it or. to put itin the terms we use in est. it's about surviving. Most of what weknow about life is rules about surviving. and you can survivemightily or you can survive tinily. but it's about surviving. Thethree rules about surviving are "more, better. and differen"';they are the answer to all problems of making it. I f you've gotany problems, the answer is one or a combination of more,

"tral1spersona'"as anaUitude

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"making i f "and

values

better, or different. "Different," by the way. has a parenthesisafter it; it's called "change." That's what I liked when you said,"W e don't need i t " How the helJ do you talk about somethingyou don't need? Obviously it's stupid to talk about somethingyou don't need-we don't talk about things we don't need inthis world. In a wor1d which is composed of making it. the onlyquestion is, what do you need? The only question is. if you'renot talking about how to make things better or make me betteror something better. or jf you're not talking about more (oh.an d the new more is "less." what we have to have is moreless) or better, or different. then you're talking drivel andnonsense. I tell people they don't need the training, that itwon't make them any better. They won't be any more sexy orsmart or better off than they were. They won't be any differentand they won't have changed. They'll be exactly as they werewhen they walked into the training and they'll have gottennothing out of it. People only value something because in theworld of "making it" only something is of value, nothing is ofno value, and it's the whole incredible stupidity of the Westernconcept of Nirvana. For my money most of the Buddhists havesold out and explained it so that it could be held in Westernterms. This has totally ruined it. Nirvana seems to be so pa-tently obvious that I can't get why the Buddhists have sold outand explained it. I mean this is Nirvana, obviously. it can't beotherwise. All of it is exactly the way it is and none of it isn'tthe way it isn't, and in the dictionary that's the description of"perfeel."JF: Earlier someone asked. what do we do it for if those folkswho we are helping don't need it. Well, it's clear whoneeds it. We do. I mean why do 1 like to talk to six hundredpeople? It isn't that they need me, bu t if they weren't there Icouldn't do that, so my feeling is that therapists, much morepanicularIy, are filling their own needs by doing therapy onpeople.A ud: Last week some friends and I were talking about theAssociation's forthcoming Fifth Annual Conference. We werediscussing "source" and the process of creativity. and a friendquoted Einstein (from Conversations with Einstein): " . .. knowl-edge lay ready before the first discoverer appeared. He didnot create it but merely drew back the veil that enveloped itso that ultimately we get back to intuition and its literal senseof becoming aware of things. an exact consideration of things.states, and relationships, and this intensive consideration fullof wonderment has always been a privilege of a very fewchosen men"-and 1 want to add that he said-Hand women."JF: The Islamic tradition holds that Mohammed was bornbefore the eanh was formed. but he didn't come into existence

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until the Mohammed that we know was born out of a motherand a father . . . that 1t was always there.WE: All the scientists I've interacted with take that view exclusively. I have the same problem with any approach whichdenies any creative knowledge and says that it's all there andyou can only discover it. Approaches of this kind generate aproblem; how come nobody learns the way the originatorlearns-that is, no t by discovery but by creation. Originatorslie to people about the way they learn because they did notlearn it. They created ie They didn't discover it because the,word "discovery" is a concept word. it's a conceptually valuedword, it's the notion that what exists. exists location ally in timeand place. and therefore you fall on it. Now the very same stuffcan be talked about at the abstract end of the spectrum inwhich you can no longer talk about discovery in a way that thething was there and you are going to flop on it. At the abstractend of the spectrum there is no evidence, and at the conceptend of the spectrum there's only evidence. So up here at theabstraction you have certainty and down here at concept youhave proof. Down here at concept you can prove anything andcan't make anything happen. and up here at abstraction youcan make anything happen and can't prove anything. Whichgoes back to. "those who know don't say, and those who saydon't know."To refer to what Jim said, Jim said you can only have beenenlightened. and I agree with him on one leveL My way ofsaying it is that what you do when you "get it " is to give it up ,because jf you hold on to it, all you hold onto is a concept,because that's all that's hold-on-to-able. Let me say it likethis: what we attempt to do is get to our experience from ou rconcepts, and maybe even get to the abstractions 'from theconcepts. and I think that was what Jim was saying about theload of books.It is my notion that coming to experience from concepts is acondition called "becoming." If you are coming from concepts.you are becoming. It is possible to create a transformation inwhich the flow of life comes from abstraction and not fromconcept.Th e thing that I said was happening when we were talkingabout caterpillars was transformation. I consider transformation inevitable-with you. without you, with me, without me,whether I like it or you like it. It's like women having morescope in the world-my opinion is irrelevant. it's going tohappen. Now I can go kicking and screaming into that, or 1 cango along politely. or I might even support it, but it's going to

". happen. The true condition of transformation for me is a

transformingthefiowof life

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tellingthe truth,creaTingthe truth

condition in which the proce!>s produces transformation naturally. rather than by force. So "Boy. I made it. I was transformed once. I got my graduation certificate and no one cantake it away from me because I have been transformed." NowI loved what Jim said, because if you do get a graduationcertificate. you are going to hold on to i t and the only thingthat saves you is to be able to give it up. Because it's only whenyou're not transformed that you can be tr ansformed; if you'realready transformed. you can't be transformed.Aud: The way good teachers. teachers with a capital 'T. teach.is mostly to rely on experience. not on words. But every once ina while. when something happens. when somebody is ready toget kicked over the edge to do it. it seems to me that conceptsdo it. a word does it at the right time.WE: I think that it's not possible to produce this state inwords. J cannot tell you the truth: I can talk so that you createthe truth for yourself. If I can talk so that you can create thetruth for yourself. and it would come to "aha!"-and I'm noteven there. you didn't even notice me. Now I didn't "get" itfrom you, but you were there. and I acknowledge you. in myterminology. as creat ing a space for me to crea te this certainty.So at one end of the spectrum is the world of words. and at theother end of the spectrum is also a world of words: one is whatI think the Buddhists call "skillful means." the other is a lot oftalk.A ud: The thing that J notice about the skillful means theor), isthat. when a good teacher tells a story. your thought isn't somuch. "Oh. I wish I had that experience" but, "Oh. I had thatexperience."WE: Yes. that's beautiful.Aud: So there's no separation between you and him.J F: I remember very vividly a friend of ours who came out tothe West. When he arrived I felt this enormous urge to teachhim something. And 1 thought. "I wish 1 was a teacher in:.;")mething, because he is so ready to be taught." And he toldu!'! about his cross-country trip, and everywhere he stopped.where he was going to hang out with anyone who either was ateacher or knew a teacher, the teacher would say, ''I' ll take youon." It was this ripeness. that you just knew he was ready to beplucked by somebody and it didn't matter who. because he wasready. And it was rare enough so that 1 can't think of anotherincidence.

The Journal of Transpersonal Psychologl', 1977. Vol. 9, No.10


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Aud: Your exampk Jim. of the teacher and the pupil is forme the gestalt of the object and the background. You caneither choose to look at the subject. or you can choose (0 look atthe background. or you can take it all in at once, which is. Ithink. what we're really talking about. In your story it seems tome that the pupil is the teacher. and so I guess I'm havingtrouble with the dynamic that is so linear.JF: Well. let me add one other concept of Transpersonalwhich 1 got from (Frederick) Spiegelberg. He pointed out thatTranspersonal can also be called transpersona, as through the.mask. When you get back to who's looking through the maskyou get beyond the subject-object. you're out into the gestalt.Aud: I think that everyone here has had the experience ofrealizing that we already not only "know it" but are "doing it."And one of the things that interests me is why it's so hard to"take credit for it." What it really is. is taking responsibility forie and we equate responsibility with credit. Now if you take thecredit that means you've got to take the blame, and none of uswant the blame. The way] see it, we don't get the pleasure ofthe credit. but we don't get the embarrassment and shame ofthe blame, and we don't take responsibility for it. My ownexperience is that when I have those moments when I takeresponsibility without the credit, then I don't worry about theblame and I really enjoy that very purely. The question is. whyis it so hard to take responsibility?WE: That's the end game move. For me. what it's really allabout is, are you really going to be responsible for being enlightened? You know, we all know people who've given upall their worldly possessions, who've given up their reputation.who've given up their parents. their children, their spouses.who've given up parts of their body. people who'd give upanything to be enlightened. except the idea that they are notenlightened. They will not give up not being enlightened. it'stoo painful, it's too terrible to give that up.Aud: And anyway it was yesterday.Aud: Could you elaborate on that fear of being enlightened?WE: It was jus t said: To be enlightened is the ultimate statement of responsibility. 1 mean, you no longer can lay the onusanyplace.Aud: It's termed, "N o praise or blame."

credit, blame. and responsibility

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anultimatelyresponsible.position

WE: Yes, that's really very good. You know. once you have areal experience of responsibility there really isn't any creditinvolved. Jmean you can't take credit for things being the waythey are because they always are the way they are. They arenever any other way than the way they are, and you can beresponsible for it. What people are afraid of is this kind ofblame-they are actually even afraid of the credit. You know.as stupid and as small as I've been. 1certainly can'1 take creditfor anything. 1might even be able to bear the blame ofil, but Isure as hell can't have any of the credit. And probably thesingle most misunderstood explanation that comes out ofpeople who have been through the eSI training is this businessabout responsibility. People cannot get that there is somethingbeyond blame or fault, credit or praise. I think what frightenspeople about ultimately being enlightened is that it's an ultimately responsible position.People who come out of the training do the same stupid thingsthey did before the training. The point is that they give themup after a while. And then they do the stupid things that arenext underneath the stupid things they've given up, and thenthey give those up after a while. So, when you got it you dostupid things, and when you don't got it you do stupid things,so what's the difference? The difference is that there's a sense.of satisfaction about life or a sense of completeness about lifewhen you're completing counter-productive patterns, a sensewhich is missing when you're simply reinforcing or dramatizing or acting out counter-productive patterns. So the realpurpose of est is not to make people better. That's really difficult for people to understand. People come out of the training absolutely unchanged if the training has really worked.Now there is some little side stuff that people talk about,about how they got better and how they lost their thyroid condition and all that stuff. That's not what the training is about.The training's about not moving someplace. it's not aboutgrowth. The training's about transformation in which the process of life is reversed. and if. in fact. that does happen. thencommunity is the natural process which results from transformation.So the training is not an end of anything. It's the beginning ofsomething and what it begins is that process of community. Butthen, instead of trying to get enlightened. you live as an expression of the enlightenment.

The Journal ofTranspersonal Psychology. 1977, Vol. 9, No.12

Werner Erhard - Some Aspects of the Est Training and Transpersonal Psychology: A Conversation

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